


the dawn will come

by lorspolairepeluche



Series: Fearsome Foursome [3]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, god forgive me for writing a songfic but IT MAKES SENSE OKAY
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-25
Updated: 2016-11-25
Packaged: 2018-09-02 03:56:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8650489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lorspolairepeluche/pseuds/lorspolairepeluche
Summary: The final battle between the Inquisitors and Corypheus.Bare your blade, and raise it high.





	

Shadows fall

And hope has fled.

Steel your heart

The dawn will come.

—

Saraan spun, trying to find her party. “Bull!” she screamed. “Solas? Blackwa—” She cut off into a very different scream.

Pain, white-hot and consuming, shot through her from the knife wound. Half-blinded by it, she swung her bow, hitting her attacker across the face, snapping his neck by sheer luck. But it had been the last second of movement, and the agony forced her to one knee, clutching at her bleeding side and fighting to stay conscious.

“Kadan!”

The first thing she realized was that the Iron Bull hadn’t called her “Boss.”

She looked up, registering red templars falling all around her before strong arms pulled her to her feet. “Come on, kadan,” Bull urged. “Talk to me.”

“Bull, Bull, that hurts,” Saraan said blearily. “I’m hurt.”

“Yeah, I know,” Bull growled. “Solas! Over here!”

The warmth of Solas’s healing magic somehow always muted the searing of a wound, and Saraan’s eyes refocused on the elf, noticing first the lines of concentration on his brow. “That bad, huh?” Her voice came out unacceptably weak.

“We cannot lose you now,” Solas said shortly as he stepped back.

“We’re safe for a moment,” Blackwall said, but did not sheathe his sword. “Inquisitor, are you all right?”

Saraan’s answer was drowned by a screech. All four of them spun around, looking to the sky. Wings flapped, red streaked the clouds, and Corypheus’s red lyrium dragon swooped down. “Inquisition, take cover!” Saraan roared. Grabbing a fallen red templar’s shield, she crouched, pulling Bull down with her and covering their backs. Heat swept them as the dragon roared again, unleashing a wave of flame.

As soon as she felt her back cool, Saraan threw the shield aside. _Mythal offered us a dragon._ “Aiyan,” she said aloud. “We need Aiyan.” She swiped her hand across her mouth, a cursory cleaning of blood and grime before she shouted.

“Inquisition! With me!”

—

—

The shepherd's lost

And his home is far

Keep to the stars

The dawn will come

—

Curses came to Aiyan’s lips, dripping out of them as the blood from the gash on his head dripped in. Everywhere he turned, there were only enemies. “Dorian!” he cried. “Where are you?”

Blood was running into his eyes; he didn’t know whether the red haze was that or— _am I dying? Is that what this is?_

The ground rushed up to meet him.

—

_“Da’len!”_

_“Keeper?” Aiyan whirled. “Keeper! Where are you? Are you here to welcome me?”_

_A pair of hands shoved at his shoulders, and he stumbled back. “What are you doing here?” Deshanna Istimaethoriel Lavellan snarled, advancing on Aiyan. “Go back, da’len! It is not your time! Your fight is not over!”_

_Her face was changing into an older one, a sharp-eyed one with a quick smirk and a quicker snarl. “Mythal,” he whispered._

_“Well-met, da’len,” she replied. “But you must go back. You must call that dragon I gave you. The Herald is not the only one needed to win this fight.”_

—

“Aiyan! Aiyan! _Amatus!_ Vishante kaffas, you _have_ to wake up!”

“If he’s healing, that’s a good sign. Keep it up. And stay calm.”

Aiyan’s eyelids felt heavy, but he forced them open. “Dorian.”

“What were you thinking?” Dorian’s voice was shaking. “I let you out of my sight for five seconds, and when I turn around, you’re on the ground!” He wiped the back of a hand across his face, smearing dirt and tears in equal measure.

Another hand entered Aiyan’s vision, gauntleted and small, and he accepted Panna’s help back to his feet. Saraan and Halla stood close, fighting off any templars that dared to come near. “Call the dragon,” Saraan instructed, pulling an arrow out of a corpse and nocking it. “We’re going to need it.” She aimed and shot, and a red templar fell with the arrow between his eyes.

Aiyan closed his eyes, unsure of how to call on the will of Mythal within him, but it leapt to his tongue, and a stream of an ancient dialect of Elvhen rolled from his mouth. Even he only recognized a few words, but it ended on _please._

This time, the red lyrium dragon’s roar was met with another.

Mythal’s dragon crashed into Corypheus’s, and Aiyan could have sworn he heard Flemeth chuckle inside his head.

—

—

Bare your blade

And raise it high

Stand your ground

The dawn will come

—

The two dragons crashed to the ground, and Panna tensed, hoping against hope—

The red lyrium dragon rose, its jaws dripping with blood, and turned to the Inquisitors, shrieking. The cry lowered to a deep growl as it began to advance.

Panna was the only one to not take a step back. “Bring it,” she snarled.

“Panna, what are you doing?” Halla demanded.

Panna grinned, darker than usual, as she raised her sword. “I’m bringing Varric a high dragon’s hide tonight.”

The dragon snarled at her before drawing its head back and roaring to the heavens.

“Cover your ears,” Panna advised the others before pulling in a deep breath of her own.

Panna’s roar back to the dragon was a challenge, and the dragon dropped its neck to glower at her, stepping forward.

Panna took a step too, holding her sword ready. “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” she muttered.

Saraan glanced to Aiyan and Halla, flicking her head around the dragon’s side. _Go._

Halla darted around the dragon’s side, one of her knives tearing a hole in its membranous wing. The creature reared, screaming, and the wing flared, knocking Halla and Aiyan away. Saraan, distracted by the other two flying past her, didn’t see the dragon’s claw sweeping toward her, and she was hurled backward, slamming into the ground and losing all breath in her lungs. The dragon turned back to Panna and snarled again, as if to say, _I defeated your taller friends in seconds. What do you expect to do?_

_I expect to kill you._

Panna lunged. The dragon’s neck shot out, but Panna ducked and rolled, coming up underneath the dragon’s neck. With a shout of triumph, she plunged her blade in. With one last rear and an agonized scream, the dragon collapsed to the ground, red haze hissing out from its body and pinning the dwarf beneath as Aiyan screamed, “PANNA!”

For an agonizing moment, all was still. “Panna?” Saraan called as Halla started forward.

A blade punched up through the dragon’s neck, lifting it ever so slightly, enough for Panna to crawl out from underneath and yank her sword contemptuously from the dragon’s flesh.

Panna stood even as Corypheus did on the other side of the battlefield. Her eyes on her next enemy, her face spattered with dragon blood, Panna roared the same challenge to Corypheus. _Not with a dragon, not with red lyrium, not now, not ever._ _You will not make me back down._

—

—

The night is long

And the path is dark

Look to the sky

For one day soon

The dawn will come.

—

Corypheus glowered, the red lyrium embedded in him pulsing with his rage. He lifted his hand, carrying the orb with it, to the sky. “Let it end here! Let the skies boil! Let the world be rent asunder!” He pointed at Panna with one long, deadly finger. “You and your world will die for what you have done, dwarf!”

Panna spat a gob of blood on the ground. “Shitheel.”

Corypheus snarled wordlessly, and the orb rose, sparking. Panna bared her teeth at it. _Go ahead, Coryphe-tits. I killed your fucking dragon, and you won’t be surviving Saraan and Aiyan and Halla. Right now, I can fucking die happy._

But the orb was moving, away from Panna, and Corypheus roared with fury again as the orb landed in Halla’s glowing green hand. “It ends here, Corypheus,” Inquisitor Trevelyan declared.

Corypheus fell to his knees, but he looked up at Halla with red lyrium glowing in his eyes. “If you even try, that mark will be ripped from your skin. Do you remember what I said the last time we were face-to-face, _Inquisitor?_ ”

The words hung in the air between them: _The mark is permanent. It cannot be removed without your death._ “Do you really believe you could ever make that sacrifice?” Corypheus sneered.

Halla didn’t even have to look back at the other three to make her decision. “For them? Yes.”

Halla raised her arm up, and the green crackling along her arm surged upward, racing itself to the Breach.

And Halla _screamed._ The magic buried in her skin, lacing up past her arm and across her chest, was ripping itself outward, tearing her bloody. Still she held the orb up, struggling to keep her eyes open to watch the Breach close.

Except it wasn’t closing. Halla fought to think clearly through the agony, try to understand why…

Hands touched her, three of them, on her shoulder, her back, her arm. Aiyan slipped his free hand into Halla’s as Saraan whispered, “We’re here.” Halla wasn’t sure whether the whisper and Panna’s solid “We’re closing this thing. Together,” were out loud or in her head.

With a crash of something like thunder and drums, the hole in the sky swirled and shrunk—and closed.

Halla staggered forward, pulling herself out from under the others’ hands, her eyes locked on Corypheus. She kept a tight grip on the orb, holding it out to him. He reached for it, almost in supplication, and she stopped out of his reach, forcing words out through gritted teeth.

“You wanted—into—the Fade?”

Green light sparked behind Corypheus, and one last rift bloomed, swallowing him as he screamed before snapping closed.

The orb dropped to the ground and shattered.

Halla dropped to the ground and did not move.

Saraan was there in seconds, carefully picking Halla’s head up off the ground. Halla’s blood dripped onto Saraan from her mangled hand, but Saraan only held her close. “It’s over,” Saraan promised. “We did it, Halla.

“We closed the Breach.”


End file.
